Rationale: The main goal of reading is comprehension,
summarization is essential to understanding what one has read. This
lesson can help summarization by modeling helpful summarizing
strategies and having graphic organizers for a reminder of the
strategies for the students. The students will read an article and will
hopefully create their own correct topic sentence for an article about
elephants.

Materials:

Copies of “African Elephant” from National
Geographic, one per student

A display with summarization rules on it, and
bookmarks (one per student) with summarization rules: -Get rid of unimportant
information-Get
rid of repeated information-Organize
items and events under one umbrella term.-Select
a topic.-Write
a topic statement that covers everything that is important from the passage of the text.

A display of this brief koala
passage:

“Koalas are marsupials, related to kangaroos. Most marsupials
have pouches where the tiny newborns develop. A koala mother usually
gives birth to one joey at time. A newborn koala is only the size of a
jellybean. Called a joey, the baby is blind, naked, and earless. As
soon as it’s born, this tiny creature makes its way from the birth
canal to its mother’s pouch.”

Write a topic statement that covers
everything that is important from the passage of text

Procedures:

Introduce
the new comprehension strategy. “Today we’re going to learn another way
to help us understand and remember what we read – summarization. Can
anyone tell me what summarization is? It is being able to get rid of
unimportant information and remember the important facts about a
passage. Summarization helps our comprehension because we know what
information helps us and we know what information does not.”

We
can review our fluency strategy first. “What is one thing we can do
when a sentence doesn’t make sense to us? We can reread and cross-check
to see if we missed something that helped the sentence make more sense.
*Write The shrub has buds on the board.* If I read the sentence
“The shrube has buds,” I would think, you know, that doesn’t sound
right. Let me check that again. The shhhhrrruuubbe has buds. Shrube?
Ohhh, the shrub has buds! A shrub, like a bush, has buds.
Cross-checking helps us with our sight vocabulary.”

Continue
with students. .. “To comprehend what we read, we have to summarize,
and we have some quick rules for good summarization.” Read the rules
from the poster to them. “I want you to read our poster about koalas
silently and when you are all done I will summarize the poster topic
first.”

Let’s
look at the koala poster. It says, “Koalas
are marsupials, related to kangaroos. Most marsupials have pouches
where the tiny newborns develop. A koala mother usually gives birth to
one joey at time. A newborn koala is only the size of a jellybean.
Called a joey, the baby is blind, naked, and earless. As soon as it’s
born, this tiny creature makes its way from the birth canal to its
mother’s pouch.” The first thing I do on our rule list is Get Rid of
Unimportant Information. I’ll take this pen I have and cross out
“related to kangaroos,” first. Since we’re learning about koalas, a
phrase about kangaroos doesn’t help us too much. I will also cross out
‘A newborn koala is only the size of a jellybean,’ because it is an
interesting fact, but not vital to complete understanding of the
passage. Next, I will cross out ‘the baby is blind, naked, and
earless,’ because those are little details that make our article
interesting, but not vital to our understanding of the entire passage.
The next rule is to get rid of repeated information – there isn’t any
in our passage, so we can move on. The next thing we do is organize
items under one umbrella term, which is a general idea of what our
passage is about. I’ll highlight ‘koalas are marsupials,’ ‘marsupials
have pouches,’ and ‘this tiny creature makes its way from the birth
canal to its mother’s pouch.’ Our umbrella term is *Koalas as
marsupials.* The next step is to decide on a topic for the passage, and
our topic is koalas. The final thing we do is complete a topic sentence
about our passage. This helps us finally short and sweetly describe our
passage in one sentence. Let me think. My topic sentence is, ‘Like most
marsupials, koalas have pouches or pockets to protect a baby (joey)
when it is a baby.’

I
have a copy of “African Elephant Profile” from National Geographic that
I want you to read. I have bookmarks for you, too, with your
summarization rules so that you can have them right with you at your
desk.” Provide a brief “book talk” for the article. . . “What do you
know about African elephants? What do they eat? Where do they live?
What about them makes them so different from their animal neighbors? I
want you to find out by reading this African Elephant Profile. Remember
to get rid of information that doesn’t help us by crossing it out with
pens and to highlight information that is important to your
understanding of the passage. When you’re finished, you will turn in
your sentence and article to me.”

Assessment: I will have the students turn in their topic
sentence and their article so that I can see what they felt was
important, any reasoning, and to assess their understanding of
summarizing. Each student will be assessed with the summarizing chart
under materials to see how they grasp important information, trivial
information, and sum everything up in one sentence. Topic sentences may
vary, but a good topic sentence might say, “Elephants are the largest
animals on Earth with big ears to keep them cool and long tusks to help
them dig for food.”